The Ministry Has Fallen
by burnbabyburn1984
Summary: AU Six years after the battle of Hogwarts, Britain's most wanted return to topple Voldemort and his corrupt government. For Hermione Granger, it also becomes a chance to salvage a piece of herself she thought she had lost.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

October, 2004

The embers of the burnt-out bus still glowed as she walked past, the acrid smoke bitter and sour as she breathed. The once-bright red paint was curled and discoloured, but she could still faintly make out the advert that had proudly adorned the side of the vehicle – "Wicked" Returns to the West End! Come Experience the Magic." A corner of a green face and pointed hat was still visible. She shivered and averted her eyes, continuing to walk cautiously across the junction, her muted footsteps echoing faintly in the empty, desolated street.

In the distance a car alarm sounded, the only noise aside from the odd rustle of plaster and paper in the breeze – she wondered how long it had been going off. Months? Years? There was no one coming to switch it off, that was for sure. The city had been sealed off after the last attack on Westminster, and anyone still there had been left to rot in the toxic fumes from the ruins of the parliament. The sky was dark with clouds, polluted beyond recognition – rumour had it that London hadn't seen sun for nearly five years. Not that there was anyone left in London to see it, anyway.

Finally, she spotted what she had been looking for, and after checking – as had been drilled into her after so long on the run - around her, above her, for any movement, any shadows that shouldn't have been there, she made her way across to the telephone box. Its window panes had long been smashed in, and sprayed across in fading black paint was the final headline of the Daily Prophet: 'The Ministry Has Fallen.' Once a gateway into that institution, the telephone box had been smashed, broken, burnt and rendered useless. She knew that; had known that for years. But she didn't need to get into the Ministry – not that there was anything left of it below London's streets anyway; it had long since been cut out and transplanted to the towering walls of Hogwarts, now tainted beyond recognition or repair. What she needed was a message.

She scanned outside the box, her fingers running along the edges of the rough and splintered frames, feeling for anything unusual – a small grain of glass sliced her finger, and she swore softly. Nothing. She tried to pull the door open, but it was sealed shut, the hinges melted and blocked. Taking a few steps back she raised a foot, decked in worn but still sturdy lace-up boots, and with three sharp kicks crumbled the door into pieces. She stepped over the shattered wood, taking another look over her shoulder and tightening her hood, just in case. There, in the top corner, peeking out from behind an old poster for a comedy show, was a plain white card – no writing, but an embossed image on one side: a lotus flower. A small smile crept to her lips, and made her cheeks ache. She reached up and tugged it down.

Stepping out the box, she shoved the card into her back pocket, and walked briskly away without looking back. Away from the main street, she ducked into alley after alley, keeping to the shadows, with the rubber soles on her trusty boots masking most of the sound of her footsteps. The clouds were growing darker and darker, but still she walked. The streets were empty except for the debris that remained in the abandoned city – crumbling bricks and plaster from nearby towers and houses; overturned wheelie bins; and the odd crumpled heap of human remains. These she walked past the fastest - she did not ponder too long, not anymore. Muggle, wizard, who cared? She learned long ago that they all died the same way, around the time she realised she had a capacity for compartmentalising that would have once terrified her. The truth was, nothing did anymore. She stepped over bodies as though she were avoiding a large puddle.

Finally, the large expanse of grass and trees came into sight, along with a large white structure rising from behind over-grown bushes. One side had completely caved in, but she walked towards the left, which by some miracle still held most of its glass panes. She parted the branches and stepped inside, the smell of vegetation still overpowering, but without the heat that had once made this place so full of tropical plants and flowers – like much of the city, they had withered and died, and only the things with thorns and ancient vines remained. She burrowed herself down into a dark corner, and only when she knew she was completely obscured from view through the glass panes, she whispered "Lumos."

The card was perfect white – so clean and bright amongst the dark moss and dirt and dust that bled into the rest of her surroundings. Its corners were sharp, except for one that had crumpled in her back pocket. She smoothed it out as best she could, her grubby fingers leaving a grey smudge. Pulling down her hood, she ran fingers through her short hair, ruffling its greasy waves – she made a mental note to find running water at her next stop. But where was that next stop to be?

She pulled out what was left of the bread she had been given as she has left Normandy and stepped into that rickety little boat – it was hard now, but she nibbled it reverently. The older woman had been so sad as she pressed the little baguette into her hands, still warm from the oven.

"S'il vous plaît soyez prudent, mademoiselle," the woman had muttered, before turning away and walking quickly back to her cottage. She had had no time to reply, or reassure the elder woman – what could she have said anyway? Nothing the woman would have believed; nothing anyone could have believed, not after the darkness and the emptiness that had polluted Europe. She had pushed her boat from the shore, its ancient wood creaking against the waves, small though they were, and had kept her eyes on the shore as she rowed. She made out the cottage for a long time, but the woman never reappeared and that saddened her a little. Eventually the cottage disappeared, too, along with the shore, as she rowed further and further into the darkness, all the time praying that the sea stayed calm, and that she could have just this little piece of luck.

Swallowing the last small bite, and licking her finger, she lifted as many as the crumbs from her jacket as she could, and scooped them into her mouth. There was no waste in her life – nothing could be unappreciated, even stale breadcrumbs. In her other hand, the card still glowed lightly into the darkness. It was time.

Breathing deeply, she straightened her shoulders, and tapped the card three times with her wand. A message slowly appeared in a small, neat scrawl along the bottom, and for the first time in months, maybe years, she smiled:

'Miss me, Granger?'


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

It didn't pay to sit down too long, even after several hours of lifting and sawing and building – the stones of the ancient wall, crooked yet sturdy, were so hot that it wouldn't have been the first time he'd burned himself, even through jeans.

The sun was relentless here, a force so powerful that he found it a wonder that everything in its path didn't simply shrivel and wither. It was certainly what he felt like doing whenever he moved out of the slightly-more-forgiving shade. As he bent and heaved another slab of stone brick up onto his chest, he wondered once more what the hell he was doing in a climate like this – he wasn't made for warm weather, even British warm weather, let alone the suffocating furnace that had come to be his temporary home.

The village was set in a small valley; the few dozen houses the same colour as the beige sand and dust that were the foundation of this country. Each house had a roof that rose, cone-shaped, from the middle. It reminded him of the ice-cream at Honeydukes in summer. There was no sweet shop here, though, only the few vegetables the locals could grow and sell, and whatever the farmers had to hand. Aside from the odd tree, warped yet surviving, there was no greenery; no grass or flowers. He had only a few t-shirts and jeans, now faded and dust-ridden beyond repair, with increasingly yellow sweat stains on the back and under the arms. He could fix them, easily, but someone would notice, so he kept them in their pitiful state and did his best to wash in water from the well. If only his mother could see him now, he often thought, but then stopped thinking it, because it hurt.

They didn't ask questions, the people here, and for that he was grateful. Although they seemed to realise he wasn't a typical gap year volunteer, he still appeared young enough to fit into a similar mould. One of the older men, a teacher, had asked him once if he was on a rehabilitation trip.

"Vous savez… drink, drugs?" the man had asked, hesitantly, curiously, not wanting to pry too much.

He saw the opportunity and took it.

"Yeah… yeah, something like that," he replied, with a deliberately sad shrug.

"We all have regrets, mon ami," the man had answered, putting a hand on his shoulder. "All have… how you say? Monsters."

He had looked away at that, his shoulders tensing.

"Oh, I've seen monsters, alright," he muttered quietly.

He wasn't sure exactly how long he'd been there, but the locals had warmed to him. He played football with some of the boys from the village sometimes, old piles of sand stones acting as goals. They'd laughed when he told them he didn't know the rules, and had rattled away in French. He could just about follow them, but only when they pointed, and they laughed more when he missed a goal, which was often – that he didn't mind, though. It was nice to see someone smile, and he didn't remember the last time he'd been relaxed enough to really smile himself.

At night, when the heat relented a little, he'd sit outside the little round, stone house he'd acquired on the edge of the village, and think about where he could go next. He'd learned after Paris not to stay in one place too long, the smell of smoke and blood and dark magic still fresh in his mind. Looking up, the stars were out – an enormous cloud of light in the pitch-black sky. He had to leave here, he knew, his shoulders dropping slightly at the growing realisation.

Looking back across the village he saw a familiar flutter – but it was a flutter that did not belong in this place. He tensed, ready to dive into the house under cover, until he realised what it was he was looking at. The owl approached him swiftly, dropped what it was carrying at his feet, and then turned quickly about in the air, before streaming off the way it had came, not stopping for payment, or a snack, or anything. It was a war bird, and they knew not to hang around, no matter how long a journey it'd been.

He watched the bird until it disappeared into the shadows of the night once more, then looked down at his feet and picked up what it had dropped – a small, white card, with some kind of flower on it. He turned it over – blank. Frowning, he looked around him, although he wasn't sure why – who round here would know what the hell this was? Then, as if it had read his mind, the card appeared with a message, one that made him roll his eyes and swear sharply under his breath. He rose and walked back into the house, closing the door quietly behind him.

In the morning, the red-haired man did not turn up to the building site, and when the teacher had gone to the small stone house he found it empty and spotlessly clean – as though no-one had been there at all. The rickety wooden door lay open, and the only thing that remained was a small white card, with a message across the bottom – one that didn't make sense, at least not to him. He frowned, and put the card back on the bare floor, the tiles slightly warm and rough under his fingertips. He turned and left the house, with one final look back, saddened by the young man's sudden departure. He hoped the monsters hadn't returned, but feared they would have – he rubbed his own forearm absent-mindedly, and walked back to the school, the dust and sand kicking up around his feet.

Had he looked back once more, he would have seen a small flame light around the card, and reduce it to nothing but a tiny pile of ashes – as the flames licked the edges of the card, the message glowed bright orange before fading into the blackening sides:

'You look fucking awful with a tan, Weasel.'


	3. Chapter 3

He stared at the wall with a scowl on his sharp face. More specifically, he stared at the poster of himself on the wall, its corners curling and the red of the border fading. Digging his hands onto his suit trouser pockets, he wondered how long it had been there? Certainly the location was way out – he'd only ever been in Avignon once, years ago, the last time –

At this he frowned, looking down the street – it was curfew hours, and although he no longer relied on disillusionment spells or invisibility cloaks to keep himself hidden, he didn't want to be caught daydreaming. He didn't want to be caught at all. One last look at the poster, and a brief smirk at the reward on offer, and he turned, walking briskly down the street in the opposite direction from where he'd come, pulling his scarf up as he disappeared down a narrow close. His poster continued to stare out, hands in pockets, a withering glare at anyone who happened to pass by. There were few left to do even that, now.

Although Edinburgh had managed to escape with worst of the war, it was a shadow of its former self. Its castle, once proudly sat overlooking the New Town, was now a prison, with the gardens surrounding it returned to the treacherous moat they had once been. Whispers of monsters and mutants swimming beneath its murky surface were not the only things causing the inhabitants to give it a wide berth – bodies were pulled out on a regular basis; some thought to have chosen to end their own suffering, stones in their pockets; others were… well, there was no natural cause for injuries like that. Although he had seen some of the worst years earlier, the sight of one mangled corpse, missing its eyes, an arm and branded with a crooked 'M' on its back, was almost enough to make him gag. Almost, mind.

People did not return from the castle - he had been witness, from his place in the shadows, to enough poor souls being dragged there under the cover of darkness, their screams interrupted by a barrage of curses and cackles from their detainees, then shut out forever once the huge wooden door close heavily behind them. On it a pair of painted red eyes stared out, with the words below:

One Nation. One Lord.

He was hardened to the horror, there was no doubt – at times, when it the city was silent enough, he would lie in his single bed, the thin blanket round his hips, and stare out of the small skylight window. If it was a very, very clear night, he could occasionally make out a star or two, through the haze of smoke constantly rising from the depths of the city. It was only at these times when he allowed himself to wonder what he would become once this was over, if it ever was. What kind of man he would be. He never allowed himself to answer.

The night of the poster, he returned to the flat, walking quietly up the stairs, up and up, and opening the door slowly, always checking around him for shadows that perhaps seemed too deep or too dark. He had been there a few months now, but it never paid to become careless; to relax, even for a moment.

Even now, the tiny proportions of the flat seemed claustrophobic, like living in the back corner of a cupboard. Two rooms, and what passed for living space, no bigger than an elevator at the Ministry. The old Ministry, that is. From the door he saw an orange glow; the small fire in the kitchenette was already burning – his companion was awake, it would seem.

"Did anyone see you?" the voice croaked, huddled in front of the little glow.

"Of course not, I'm not an imbecile," he snapped, though without much feeling.

"Have you sent them yet?"

At this he paused. Looked down at the huddled lump, once so full of energy and spirit.

"Do you really think that's wise?" he asked finally, not unkindly. "You're not exactly what you were."

The huddle looked up, eyes keen as ever.

"I know that. But this can't wait forever. It's time. You know it is."

He sighed, folding his tall, once-gangly shape into a wicker chair, the broken rattan digging sharply into his thighs.

"Who do you want me to call?"

The huddle smiled for the first time, an unusual sight on a face usually so contorted with pain; so used to discomfort.

"You know who," he said, still smiling.

He looked into the fire, lost for a moment, remembering small hands with soft palms and callused fingertips. He closed his eyes. Opened them again.

"She… she might not come. If she knows it's me," he said quietly, looking at the huddle with more caution than usual.

The huddle met his gaze evenly.

"Yes she will." There was not a trace of doubt or hesitancy in that voice or gaze, and it reminded him, keenly, of the boy that had once stood before him in the hall that smelled of spices, and roast meat, and cinnamon. He nodded, and stood, retreating to his room across the stripped and squeaking wooden floor. The huddle remained in front of the tiny fire, rubbing his hands together, and grimacing slightly when he tried to shift closer.

As he closed the door, once white and smooth, now dull with grime and scuffs, he stood, looking up to the skylight. There were no stars tonight. No wondering for the future – and with chances like this, the future would be a short one. He kneeled down, the floor cold and hard beneath his knees, and reached a long hand under his mattress, fingertips searching amongst the odd book; the cool glass of a half empty bottle; the still soft cashmere of a scarf; ah. The sharp corner of a bundle of thick card, which he pulled out carefully. The pile was not huge, only the size of a deck of playing cards, and bound together with a frail-looking rubber band, but the corners were as sharp as the day he had cut them, and as he ran his thumb across he could feel the embossed shape of the flower. Muttering a few spells under his breath, he charmed messages into three of them, before turning, opening the window a crack and whistling two notes softly. The dark shape of the war owl approached with stealth he almost envied. It took the cards quickly, then flew off, as though it had never been there.

He left his room, and walked back to the fire and the God-awful wicker chair, which still dug into him, no matter which way he shifted.

"Done."

"Good."

Harry Potter kept his gaze on the fire.

"You miss her."

It wasn't a question, and at this point there seemed little point in replying. So Draco Malfoy simply sighed, and if that sigh sounded like a small "yes", then so be it. There was no room for secrets in such a small flat, anyway.


	4. Chapter 4

_Sorry this is so long in coming - up to my ears in dissertation and marking. It's also a little shorter, but frankly there's only so long you can describe someone walking along a road. Unless you're Cormac McCarthy, which I'm - sadly- not ._

When she was little, her parents used to take her to the local park on Bonfire Night to see the fireworks. Her curls would bounce as she jumped and squealed with each new bang - colours of red and green and purple and gold exploding around her, with the crowd cooing at the beauty and excitement before them. After, she had slept soundly, tucked tightly into her room with its books and floral wallpaper, a smile lingering on her face as she dreamt of colours and bangs and her parents' laughs.

It was amazing to her how much the end of her world had resembled those nights in the sharp cold. It was yet another memory of her family that left a bitter taste in her mouth - like the spatters of blood a Death Eater had gleefully decorated that wallpaper with, or the Muggle photos that had been left torn and charred around what remained of her parents.

No, the fireworks that final night - after her parents, after everything else - had not been followed by adoring gasps of excitement. Those violent bursts of colour had instead been followed by screams that made her stomach churn, or - worse - silences that were suffocating in their finality. As she fought and stumbled and bled and hid, she saw the blank eyes of her friends, others vomiting in corners between duels, some sobbing uncontrollably, cradling what seemed to be pale, waxy imitations of people she had known. She remembered the scream from Ginny Weasley that tore through her like ice as she watched her mother fall. She searched through bodies for red hair, black hair, white -

This had been a fireworks display, indeed, but she never let herself remember it - at least not while she was awake. Her nights were now her own personal horror, where her parents laughs now mixed with the brutal cries of war.

It had been six years since she had seen Scotland, and noted with fondness and exasperation that it was freezing, as ever. She crossed over the border hooded and soft-footed - the welcome sign was dismantled into a crude pile, with a new, wooden sign in place, two red eyes fixed on her as she approached.

To her left a wild forest grew menacingly over the tarmac that had once seen so many cars; now the branches scavenged and twisted their way across. It was almost night, and a cool mist hung hawk-like over the road, the puffs of air from her mouth rising lightly as she walked briskly. Her hands stayed stuffed inside her jacket pockets, partly for warmth, partly to keep a tight grip on her white card. She knew what it meant; she knew who it was from. But in a world where she had no possessions past her wand, her boots, and the jacket she had taken from some poor dead woman in the street one desperate evening, she gripped the card tight enough to put a bend in the middle and creases at the corners.

As she walked, she tried to imagine the conversations she would have when she reached them. She imagined hugging Harry tightly, then frowned at the thought. She could not, not now. She wouldn't be able to bury her face in her best friend's shoulder now, relishing the smell of wool and Quidditch leathers that had been for her safety and simple, uncomplicated love. It wasn't often she felt angry now - she couldn't, really; it would have burned her inside out if she'd stayed as furious as she had been for so long. The thought of not being able to cuddle her friend made her kick a stone so violently it - impressively, she reflected later upon calming down - splintered the thick branch it hit. She walked on.

She tried rather too hard not to think of him. To remember. She had flashes of crumpled sheets, moans, hands gripping her thighs, "yes". She closed her eyes and physically shook her head. Stop. She needed to stop.

She walked through the night, stopping only to check her bearings with her wand, and only then under cover of a tree or ruined outbuilding. It was dawn when she finally decided to rest, stepping into a small ramshackle shed on the outskirts of a field, it's roof sparkling with frost in the low winter sun. She curled into a ball, wand in pocket in her fierce grip; the card was clutched in the other. Her dreams were muddled - white hair in her fingers, smirking whispers in her ear, and warm in her stomach. Between that, they were as they usually were - screams, and cries, and blood. And those damned fireworks.


	5. Chapter 5

He had arrived, tanned and increasingly freckled, a fortnight after Draco had sent the cards, dragging a small, weather-beaten rucksack that held only clothes that had seen far better days, a few loose coins of varying currency, and two crumpled photos – one of his family, taken the summer before everything had gone to shit, their matching red hair glowing warmly in the bright sun; the other of the Golden Trio, sitting outside Hagrid's hut, each laughing at whoever was behind the camera. Ron passed it to Draco with a too-blank glance, and Draco felt something churn in his gut for a few moments. He tried very hard to look at everything else in the photo – the uniforms, sleeves rolled up; Hagrid's drooling dog, its chin resting on Harry's fully-functioning legs; even the ramshackle haircut Ron had sported at the time. It did not matter. He looked at what he tried not to look at, and the churning grew sharp and painful. Still no response. He handed the photo back and turned to put the kettle on.

The flat had been cramped and uncomfortable with only Harry and Draco sharing; it was bloody unbearable now Ron had arrived, too. The three bumped into each other every few minutes it seemed, like dodgems at the fair. Harry and Ron continued to smile about it, both still awash the glow of their reunion, occasionally hugging each other tightly, both ignoring the whimpers that were then forced from Harry's broken form.

Draco, on the other hand, was less than enthusiastic.

The lone benefit of this flat, small and freezing and ramshackle as it was, was that occasionally there was a quietness to be found - the hours when Harry was too exhausted to talk anymore, shuffling off to sleep, stubbornly shrugging off Draco's offers of help; the early, early part of the day when even the most zealous Death Eaters weren't quite ready to be torturing muggles streets below, their screams no longer drifting through the air like a poison, if only for a short while. These moments were precious to Draco, moments where he could remember the smell of fresh parchment, knotted curls and small feet tucked under his. He clung to these times, though he never spoke of them. Never. What good would that ever do?

This particular morning the quiet was broken, though he couldn't say what from. Weasley's snores had - finally - petered out, his journey taking its toll. He lay stretched out on a spare blanket in the tiny kitchen, one foot braced on the wall. Draco could still make out the sand on the hem of his trousers, and wondered (not for the first time) how Weasley kept his talents as a wizard hidden; to have travelled so far without raising the alarm in Voldemort's ranks took skill indeed. He had asked Ron, but all the redhead would say was that he'd "called in a favour." His freckled face had paled as he spoke, though, and he looked away. Draco got the sense that the person who granted the favour had perhaps not been as fortunate as Weasley in going undetected. He pressed the subject no further.

As Ron continued to sleep, Draco listened for what was amiss: the streets were still quiet; Harry was shut in his minute room, a place he sometimes joked made him miss the space in his first room with the Dursleys; even the tap that dripped mockingly from the sink had stopped, fixed swiftly by Ron the Muggle way (opening up the cupboard below and banging on a pipe or two had simply not occurred to Draco).

It took Draco almost twenty minutes to realise what was so wrong about this particular morning.

There was someone else standing very quietly outside the door.

Draco slid his wand from under his greying, limp pillow and sat up. If he hadn't been so scared, he would have rolled his eyes. He did loathe speaking to people in the morning.

He sat up silently, and inched his way to standing, remembering his training – "No sudden movements, boy, not if you want to keep your head" – and glided slowly, calmly towards the door. There were three boards that creaked, and he ensured he avoided them, his bare feet catching on the rough edges of the wood. He breathed slow, shallow breaths, and fisted the hand that did not hold his wand when he felt it shake slightly.

The door had no peephole, but there was crack in one of the panels, wide enough to make out a sliver of the darkened stairwell. Draco pressed himself towards it, holding his breath. The person on the other side of the door sighed loudly.

"Malfoy, can you just open the sodding door?"

Draco huffed as he pulled open the door to the still beautiful face of Ginny Weasley. She fixed him with a steady glare, and Draco felt himself wince internally.

"Is there are reason you didn't call 'til now, Malfoy?"

Draco averted his eyes, as he began to sense movement in the tiny space behind him, seemingly woken by Ginny, who made no effort to keeper voice down, nor tread lightly as she pushed past him into the flat.

"Or is it because he told you not to?" Her stare and tone took on a more brittle edge, only for a second.

Draco closed the door and leaned against it, folding his arms then pinching his nose.

"I'm not sure what you could have done until now. He's not been…ready. Not until now," he replied, not unkindly. Ginny looked away.

"I know," she whispered. "But…" She did not continue, and Draco did not press her.

There was the soft scramble of movement, then a flurry of red, arms outstretched, as Ron enveloped his sister. Draco thought he saw a tear run down the other man's face, but could not bring himself to taunt him for it. Confronted with the people he loved, Draco wasn't convinced he would be able to stop himself from openly sobbing, which was a terrifying prospect in itself.

"Have you seen her?" he found himself blurting out instead, then immediately regretted it as both Weasleys turned to him with identical smiles. Ron looked back towards Ginny, as she said softly:

"She's coming up the stairs now."

Draco immediately stood up straight, then froze, before turning towards the door and yanking it open. There in front of him stood Hermione Granger, clad in worn black and grey, her famous curls now cropped close to her head. And she was furious.


End file.
